WASHINGTON — As Republicans grasp for a pathway back to national dominance, key Texans have joined the ride — and sometimes given conflicting directions.

Stick with long-held conservative principles, and the voters will come around. Veteran Gov. Rick Perry and freshman Sen. Ted Cruz offered that advice to an influential meeting of activists here last week.

But that double-down strategy stood in sharp contrast to Karl Rove’s political fix-it plan. The Austin-based maestro behind George W. Bush’s rise to power has vowed to push “electable” candidates over the sort of hard-liners who lost key races in 2010 and last year.

The tussle to reshape the party pits those who emphasize pragmatism against a relatively impatient, ideological approach. Republicans from Texas, the biggest red state, naturally are at the center of it.

“Every Republican, every conservative should focus every policy on easing the means of ascent up the economic ladder,” Cruz said in his headline speech Saturday, capping the Conservative Political Action Conference.

The party faithful cheered him and Perry as they insisted the GOP must not waver from core beliefs, as the mere mention of Rove was enough to whip them into a scorning froth.

“The last thing we need is Washington, D.C., vetting our candidates,” Sarah Palin, the 2008 nominee for vice president, said in her appearance Saturday.

Invoking Rove’s nickname, she said, “The architects can head on back to the great Lone Star State and put their names on some ballot.”

On Fox News Sunday, Rove shrugged off the internal strife as “nothing exceptional. … The party that doesn’t have the White House tends to have these difficulties.”

He also shot back at Palin for resigning as Alaska governor halfway through her only term.

“If I did run for office and won, I’d serve out my term,” he said.

Post-mortem

The Republican Party has been conducting a lively post-mortem on the 2012 elections.

It had hoped to wrest the White House from a relatively unpopular incumbent and win control of the Senate. Yet it got hammered, losing the presidential race and ending up with fewer senators. The party also fell back in the House, now the GOP’s last line of defense against President Barack Obama’s agenda.

As CPAC speakers focused on ideology and messaging, the party’s own recommendations tend toward structural matters.

GOP chairman Reince Priebus will release results of the party’s self-analysis on Monday, including plans to beef up its digital efforts. In a preview Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation, he complained that the primary season “is way too long.” The last cycle had 23 debates that resulted in too many self-inflicted wounds.

He wants to hold the 2016 convention as early as June, rather than late August. That means the next nominee can start spending general election funds sooner.

“Mitt Romney was a sitting duck for two months over the summer,” leaving him open to attacks from Obama allies, Priebus said.

Priebus said he will spend $10 million to hire hundreds of operatives to promote the party “brand” in areas the GOP has lagged, “from coast to coast in Hispanic, African-American, Asian communities.”

That, he said, should help inoculate the party against “silly things like Todd Akin.” His comments about “legitimate rape” cost the party a winnable Senate seat in Missouri. And it caused troubles for Romney and others as they courted women voters.

At CPAC, Perry sought to rebut “the popular media narrative” that the last two presidential defeats showed that Americans have shunned conservative ideals.

“That might be true if Republicans had actually nominated conservative candidates,” he said.

Perry’s entry into the presidential race last time was short-lived, and he has not ruled out trying again.

He dismissed suggestions the GOP should shift in substantive ways to appeal to Hispanics, who tend to vote Democratic.

“In states like Texas,” he said, “they want opportunity, freedom and a better shot at providing for their families. And that is true whether they are a first-generation American, or like a lot of Hispanics in Texas, had families living here long before Crockett and Bowie and Houston made their way south.”

Tough love

Although Cruz, Perry and a parade of other CPAC headliners insisted on a sharp-edged approach toward Democrats on policy matters, some urged more emphasis on reaching out to the many millions of Americans who aren’t already inside the conservative tent.

That was the tough love message from former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, brother and son of the last two Republican presidents and a potential contender next time.

“Way too many people believe Republicans are anti-immigrant, anti-woman, anti-science, anti-gay, anti-worker, and the list goes on and on and on,” he said Friday. “We need to be the party of inclusion and acceptance.”

That speech generally fell flat compared to those from tea party darlings, such as Cruz and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul.

Paul, who won the CPAC preference poll among attendees who ranked presidential contenders, echoed the prescription Cruz has offered for months.

“We need a Republican Party that shows up on the South Side of Chicago and shouts at the top of our lungs: ‘We are the party of jobs and opportunity. The GOP is the ticket to the middle class,’” he said.

Paul also mocked his party’s establishment ranks, saying “the GOP of old has grown stale and moss-covered.”

So, is the problem packaging and lack of outreach, or the message itself? Few conservatives are eager to concede that voters heard their message and shunned it.

“We do know deep down, as Ronald Reagan did, that we don’t have to change,” said David Keene, president of the National Rifle Association.

Rove-bashing was far more in vogue.

Phyllis Schlafly, founder of Eagle Forum, told CPAC that if Rove were a football coach, he’d be fired. “He had almost $400 million to spend on the election last year, and he ran TV ads for 31 candidates and only elected seven of them,” she said.

On Fox News, Matt Kibbe, president of the tea party group FreedomWorks, condemned Rove for promoting ideologically squishy candidates.

“You look at who has been winning elections, it’s been interesting, exciting, young, energetic people like Ted Cruz, like [Florida Sen.] Marco Rubio,” Kibbe said. “Certainly, the tea party doesn’t bat a thousand, but at least we’re winning elections.”

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